Zippy on a mini-bus, waiting for the ferry in central Guyana

Georgetown/Letham Road

Sometimes things don’t go as planned and Zippy has to take a ride on a bus, in this case a mini-van packed sardine-like with 12 passengers, on a dirt road across Guyana. It’s always a mini-adventure traveling the way the locals travel. All South Americans seem to like their pop music, and because they like it so much, they play the same top hits over and over again, at speaker-buzzing volumes. I once liked Latin music; no more.

Georgetown/Letham Road and pop music Mini van being destroyed by potholes; 18 hours of this teaches patience and tolerance, or at least it should.

Story telling on a Guyana ferry

Claire in hammock in Guyana. Long sleeves for mosquitoes, not cold!

Jungle Hammock Sounds of the night in mid Guyana

Travel With The Locals

The cramped ride was for 18 hours, but we did have about five hours in the middle to have a nap stretched out in the hammocks we brought from the Amazon barco (boat) portion of this trip. A nice tropical rain made for a deep sleep, and it was back on the road again.

The Georgetown/Letham Road.

A paradise of flowers

botanical garden birds

Georgetown, Guyana Market

Selling newspapers at the market in Georgetown counting her cash

Peppers in basket in the Georgetown, Guyana Market

Not Your Vision of the Caribbean

Beach near an upscale hotel in Georgetown

A common view in Georgetown

Encounters in Georgetown, Guyana

Morning commute across the river in Guyana

Delivery horse in downtown Georgetown

Strong Gun Control Laws, Violence Rampant with Cutlass (Machete)

Almost daily news in Georgetown

View from our guesthouse in Georgetown

Sign at lunchette by day, bar by night, we had the Cook-up at noon.

Place of quiet in Georgetown

Fake palm: metaphor for Georgetown's future?

Guyana is one of those countries on the cusp of some difficult decisions. It’s still mostly third-world rapidly being dragged toward a developing-world role by(mostly) China’s thirst for natural resources. What they will do with increasing wealth will determine what kind of life Guyanese can expect. As we have heard in Peru and Brazil, internal corruption is the biggest threat they face. We were told the maintenance on the Georgetown/Lethem Road was contracted out, and most of the money went into the pockets of government officials and the fixed bid winner, and little goes into the road, at a cost of millions in lost efficiency of travel on the only north south road, and repairs to vehicles.

The pattern is reportedly being repeated in contracts for China mining Guyana’s resources. If they are to become a true developing-world country, they will need to develop value added manufacturing and exporting. Now China (and others) buy natural resources and little else. Perhaps this is due to corruption, or a lack of middle-class education necessary for the development of an entrepreneurial class. Now Guyana is a divided country: we often saw expensive automobiles parked beside crumbling park benches, the beds of the many homeless. The lack of a middle class, and the conditions that produce a middle class, will doom any country to the dustbin of economic history. We currently have a shrinking middle-class in America.

Guyana is not a tourist destination for most of us. If you have thousands to spend per week at a fly-in high end resort in the jungle, I’m sure it would be wonderful, as large tracts have been preserved for the few. One interesting development is that Guyana is selling carbon credits based on it’s thousands of square miles of jungle. It’s sort of like an export not requiring capital; earning money by letting things alone. Where is the money going? Hopefully into education, and developing manufacturing and infrastructure. We didn’t see evidence of that. It’s a good bet that when China develops a taste for tropical hardwoods, the jungle will be for sale, by the powerful corrupt.

America’s lack of corruption is rare in this world. It’s one of the things a strong middle class doesn’t tolerate. We have much to be thankful for, but I’m afraid Americans are more prone to complaining than thanksgiving.

More on corruption in South America in a future post: If you have an accident in America, are you afraid to call the police?

We were more than a little nervous, as we rode our tandem up to the first security station at the border between Laos and Vietnam. Claire, a Western woman with a passport saying she was born in Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war, was bound to attract attention. But the attention was brief, not at all negative, and we passed through without delay, something of a miracle for our checkered past at Asian borders.

North Vietnamese Tank on Route 9

The countryside changed little from Laos at first, until we topped the border mountains and looked out over a sea of jungle toward Khe Sanh, Dong Ha and the Gulf of Tonkin.  We stopped for a break at a pedestal featuring a war era North Vietnamese tank. A driver and guide translated for an American and his wife, who were visiting to see the places where his brother had fought. He wanted to understand the war that had defined his brother’s life.

Lam Son 719, The Battle to Cut the Hoh Chi Minh Trail

For years, the American military had been trying to cut, disrupt, interdict movement of troops and material from North Vietnam through the web of jungle trails in Laos nicknamed the Ho Chi Minh Trail. For us, managing two days of the worst of it, much of it pushing our tandem bicycle (see photo above), it was a mini-hell of mud, mosquitoes and fear of unexploded ordnance, with the added uncertainty of being lost. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the troops walking with heavy loads for weeks or months, and the truck drivers fighting the horrific mud path, in constant fear for the B52s dropping huge loads, and platform gunships circling above laying down a hail of large-caliber fire. We had it easy.

Ho Chi Minh Trail Stream Crossing

Hoh Chi Min Trail Troop and Material Movements

From supposedly reliable intelligence, Abrams was able to follow the progress of troops and supplies south, and judge where and when the North planned to attack over the border into Vietnam. To paraphrase from A Better War, Lewis Sorley: Troops advanced south in waves 500 to 600, moving at 12.2 kilometers per day, mostly by foot, the trucks saved for supplies and ammunition. We were able to move perhaps 60 Kilometers on the unimproved section, partly because our load was not on our feet, but on our bicycle, and partly because we had no backup supplies; we had to get out of that jungle in short order.

Losses to North Vietnamese Troops on the Hoh Chi Minh Trail

To further paraphrase Sorley: The trail was so fraught with danger that 22 to 50% of the troops were lost to illness (probably malaria, parasites and injuries) B52 strikes with heavy bombs and cluster bombs (bombies), later the feared gunships/gun platforms. To get material (food, ammunition) down the trail to staging areas near Vietnam, they had to put 10 tons into the northern end of the trail to get one ton to destination.

Along Vietnam Route 9 looking back toward Laos and Sepon

We entered Vietnam via Route 9, the main line of communication and supply for Operation Lam Son 719, the offensive against Tchepone and the Trail, that might have been pivotal, had not the political battle back in the States already had been lost. From our perch with the tank, overlooking the dense jungle and steep, if not high, mountains, I could only wonder that any conceivable battle plan could have results in such a brutal and foreign environment. And yet, this battle, conceived, and timed by General Abrams, could have turned the tide. However, South Vietnamese President Thieu made a political decision, and their troops stalled short of Tchepone. Adding to ARVN (The South Vietnam Army) confusion, U.S. Intelligence had failed to tell Abrams just how poor was the condition of Route 9. Also he North Vietnamese resistance was much stronger than anticipated; they were far more willing to take casualties than ARVN. The North was always more willing to sacrifice troops than ARVN and the U. S. Army, and this was no more evident than the battle for Tchepone (Sepon) and Route 9 in an attempt to cut the Hoh Chi Minh Trail, the supply and troop route we slogged through in Laos.

Cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail: Fail

B52s had been taking a heavy toll on the battlefield, and on troop and supply movements on the Trail, but the North kept moving to the front via the Hoh Chi Minh Trail. It must have been very frustrating for General Abrams; so close to closing the Trail that he thought it was one of the two most important tactics for, if not winning the war, at least achieving a reasonable  peace with the Demilitarized Zone in tact.

Our Route 9 was nothing like it was for ARVN and American support troops: “Route 9 was at best a narrow twisting, nearly unimproved surface or so it was from the air. The reality was much worse.” Our Route 9 was smooth, mostly downhill and blessedly free of heavy traffic.

Bicycling the Song Quan Tri River to Batong

Batong Villagers Giving Silly Westerners the Bad News

Naturally we could not let such easy conditions last! We decided to take another “short cut”  down the Song Quang Tri river to Quang Tri along the coast. However a typhoon had recently caused epic flooding. After a half-day of pedaling ruined roads and mud, we only made it as far as Batong. There the whole village turned out to laugh at the Western couple on the funny double bicycle who didn’t know that the bridge had been washed away. Sometimes not knowing the language can create issues. However, we saw some beautiful country we would not have seen otherwise. The Song Quang Tri river must have been a constant trap for U.S. gunboats with rice paddy dams and jungle lining both banks, giving cover. Another reminder of just how difficult it is to fight a war on the other guy’s turf. We retraced our route to arrive back at Route 9 just before dark. We easily found accommodation, but it took an hour to find food, all venues booked for a special holiday.

Sobering Reminder in Hue

Our next stops were Dong Ha, Hue and across Hai Van Pass to Danang where we planned a couple of rest days at China Beach, a noted if not notorious, R&R spot for U.S. troops. South on Route 1A, the coast road we encountered many ruins of anti-aircraft installations, particularly along the paralleling railroad tracks leading to the Demilitarized Zone. Hue was the site of brutal fighting and at least one North Vietnamese mass killing of civilians according to Sorley. We spent several days there waiting in vain for the rain to ease, but enjoyed our walks around the walled city, and the good food available everywhere. The feared Hai Van Pass was a non event, in cycling terms; our legs were so strong from Tibet and Laos and the sea level air filled with oxygen.

From Hai Van Pass looking north

Topping Hai Van Pass

For some these posts will seem without passion, neither patriotic flag waving, or screaming anti-war. I was never was either of those camps. Conflicted about the Vietnam War from the time the military rejected me as physically unfit to serve, which seems amazing now. Had the medical community known to give antibiotics for bleeding ulcers, I would have served. I would not have run to Canada, nor gone to jail. It’s not what West Virginia country boys did.

Cycling through Laos and Vietnam gave me a perspective on the war-that-never-was, for me. It also helped me understand the decisions made, and the truly horrific conditions both sides faced. My passion is for understanding people, all kinds of people, the things that are important in their lives, and ways we can better communicate to avoid conflicts of culture, religion and ideology that lead to no win wars.

That’s what, with Lewis Sorley‘s help, we’ll discuss in the final post of this series.

A footprint in sand. Soon to be erased by the breath of time. A mark. An instant. One step of many. Why make it special? Do you note your marks? Do you listen to the sound your foot makes in sand? Do you feel the pressure, the texture, the cool or the heat? Just a thought.

This is a repost of an evocative interaction with a young couple in crisis. Men and women are different. Duh. We have to learn to live together and learn communication, throughout our relationships. Hopefully we gave this young couple something to remember, something to go back to in times of difficulty.

Bob:

“You don’t fu….. care about me!” It came from a young woman sitting in a car beside Turtle. “You don’t treat me like you did before. You don’t treat me the same fu….. way you did before we got married.” A young man, stood tall beside her window, hands at his sides, outer calm mirrored in his desert camouflage uniform, defending himself in an even tone. “It’s not me. It’s you,” he said.

His tone and demeanor seemed to make her even angrier. The recriminations continued, she shrill and emotional, he controlled, uncommunicative.

Claire and I looked at each other. We both had tears in our eyes. It was our twentieth anniversary, and we were witnessing the beginning of the end of a young marriage. It didn’t take words between us to know what we would do. We held hands and walked around the motorhome to them.

Claire: I was really nervous about this type of encounter; domestic disputes are one of the most dangerous calls for police, but we could tell from the vague, repetitive accusations that they had reached an impasse.

Bob: “It’s our twentieth anniversary,” I said. “And we just had to say something. We couldn’t help but overhear.” I nodded toward Turtle. “I hope you don’t mind.” He acknowledged us, “No.” She quickly put the car in reverse and said “It’s okay, I was just leaving.” But she didn’t.

I looked at him. “You don’t understand her emotions. You will when you are older, but for now, just listen. She’s hurting, and you need to hear her” And to her through the window I said, “You don’t understand why he’s so calm, so unresponsive to your hurt.” She nodded, still looking down. “He’s just doing what men are taught. We’re not supposed to show emotion. Fathers and football coaches,” I acknowledged his uniform, “the military, none of them reward a show of emotion.” I clapped him on the shoulder, there were still tears in my eyes, “When you are 66 you will know that it’s okay to cry, but not yet. I understand.”  “But you have to understand her need to see you show her your love.”

She stole a furtive look at him, her mascara left marks of her tears. “You’re being a man, and she’s being a woman.” He smiled just a tiny bit.

Claire: “It’s what men do, it’s called freezing up, it happens when they are feeling bombarded, so they just clam up. Trust me, this happens to men and women all over the world, but it just causes the women to yell more because they think they’re not being heard.”

Bob: “You gotta work together. That’s the hard part of marriage, but it’s the rewarding part too.” I turned to him. “We travel, just the two of us, on our tandem bicycle all over the world.” His eyebrows went up. “Last year we rode over the Tibetan Plateau, through Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, three thousand miles.” He was really listening now; man stuff I guess. “A few years before, we went from Beijing to Istanbul.” I touched his arm. “Across Central Asia; I hope you don’t have to go there.” I didn’t expect him to be as attentive as he had become; he was really hearing what an old man (to him) had to say. “A couple doesn’t do something like that without knowing how to work together.”  I smiled at what I’d just said. “There’s nothing like it.” “But, it takes some time, and a lot of listening.”

Claire: The writer in me spoke to her: “If you aren’t able to communicate what you need, try writing it down, write what’s wrong and write what you think would fix it, but don’t give up.” She cracked the window a bit more and went back to twisting the beautiful wedding and engagement rings.

Bob: She rolled her window down further and looked up at him, he down at her. “Touch each other,” I gently insisted. They slowly reached out to touch hands and lock eyes. “We’ll go away now.”

We hurried to Turtle, threw things where they wouldn’t fall and started the engine. As we drove away, he was leaning through the window and they were kissing.

We could have gifted ourselves a cruise to Alaska, celebrated at the Captain’s table with expensive Champagne, and seen Alaskans at a safe remove. Instead, we had leftovers and box wine in Turtle in a library parking lot, and maybe, just maybe, made a difference in two young lives. No contest.

Maybe we didn’t focus enough on these deadly little guys in our many presentations of our In Search of Shangri-La adventure. We got lost for two days along a little traveled branch of the Hoh Chi Minh trail in Laos, and we probably stepped over some of these, or phosphorus bombs or worse. We knew the risks, many kilometers beyond the last of the bomb clearing units, but had to push through the jungle toward Vietnam or run out of food and water.

Our risk was nothing compared to the average Laotian farmer, wandering children, firewood gathering women, who know every single day of their lives, that their next footstep could mean death, or for some worse, maiming, in a poor country where everyone must contribute.

Some facts: 270 million of these bombies were dropped on a country the size of Utah. Of the more than 50,000 people killed or maimed by the bombings, 20,000 have occurred after the end of the war. An average of one person a day is killed or maimed in Laos now, nearly 40 years later. I could go on, but I suggest you go the the January/February 2011 Issue of Sierra Magazine for Karen Coates’ excellent, if short, story. I want to know more about this chapter of our history, a chapter I might have taken part in except for a bleeding ulcer.

Lost in Laos on a branch of the old Ho Chi Minh trail

Read more about our Laos adventure and more on our In Search of Shangri-La bicycle journey.

I wrote (below): “If such a gentle people were capable of those atrocities, what society is not? If Cambodians could become so divided that they began murdering other Cambodians, could we? How far must civil discourse erode before “the other” is so reprehensible to deserve killing?”

After today’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords I am reminded that our lack of civil discourse is tearing this country apart. We would not survive another civil war.

Reprint below:
By Bob Rogers

After 35 years, the first Khmer Rouge mass murderer has been convicted in Cambodia. We’ve all heard of the killing fields of Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge murdered between one and two million other Cambodians. It was one of the worst periods of mass murder in history. It was the Chinese Cultural Revolution gone crazy. The Khmer Rouge, in attempting to bring about an agrarian utopian society, sought out and murdered anyone with an education, and anyone associated with them.

I remember following news reports of the carnage in this far away land, and wondering how such a thing could happen in a society. After Claire and I bicycled the length of Cambodia near the end of our In Search of Shangri-la tour, I am even more puzzled, and not a little disconcerted.

While the Cambodians are not as laid back as Lao, or as industrious as Vietnamese, they were friendly. Though not as outwardly happy as the irrepressible Lao, they were reasonably outgoing. And yet, some of the older Cambodians we saw must surely have been murderers. The Khmer Rouge were peasants, and we traveled through the rural countryside at twelve miles per hour, bought food from them at markets and street restaurants, slept in their guest houses. We smiled and received smiles in return. And yet, there was a pall of uncertainty for me, as I watched a landscape roll past, a rice small field that just might have been a killing field.

The Image most people have of the killing fields and mass graves, are of one central location near the Capitol, Phnom Penh. But, the killings took place in villages across Cambodia and the mounded mass graves still stand above the rice paddies, sometimes marked by simple concrete altars festooned with flowers and incense. Someone remembers and makes offerings to the gods, offerings of remembrance, and perhaps a hope that such a thing never happen again. It is an eerie sight to see the rice people working their fields so close to the bones of those killed there.

The reason Cambodia has been so slow to begin the process of justice escapes me, but I am not Asian. I didn’t grow up working dawn to dusk fighting the vagaries of nature, just to have a bowl of rice. From what we saw in Laos and Vietnam, Southeast Asians tend toward forgiveness. They hold no grudges against the former enemies in what they call the American War. Perhaps the Cambodians have passed on opportunities for justice all these years because they are either forgiving, or they are guilty. Now a generation is coming of age with no memory of those times. Perhaps the justice beginning now will educate them.

If such a gentle people were capable of those atrocities, what society is not? If Cambodians could become so divided that they began murdering other Cambodians, could we? How far must civil discourse erode before “the other” is so reprehensible to deserve killing?

For more on Cambodia go to New Bohemians, In Search of Shangri-la

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This year, Claire and I will dance our fool hearts out to the great swing tunes of sixty years ago, and we’ll dance into the new year.
New Year’s Day, we will do what we have done each of the New Year’s Days of our relationship: we’ll do one of our several favorite forms of exercise, probably bicycle, eat one of our (healthy) favorite foods, take a nap, and enjoy the pleasures of married life, not necessarily in that order. We used to take a dip in the cold ocean, but that doesn’t work too well here in Arizona. Our tradition is to start the New Year off together doing the things we look forward to doing all the coming year. It is for us, a long and honored tradition.

It’s good to have traditions for the New Year, but not all traditions are positive. One I have done without for many years is to make a New Year’s resolution. Here’s why:

You will break it. Sad to say, nearly all New Year’s resolutions are broken, probably within a few weeks to a couple of months of their making. Oh, the motivation is pure. Say, you really, really resolve to lose that ten pounds you gained over the holidays, not to mention the three to five pounds that crept up on you over the year, like they have each year since you passed twenty-five. Don’t be too hard on yourself, it happens to the purest among us. It’s just the natural aging process, our wealthy society, our holiday binging philosophy, and just plain human nature.

The New Years resolution dilemma has one big weak link. Everyone makes resolutions at the same time each year, and when one weak soul breaks their resolution, we break ours in commiseration, because: 1. We are so compassionate. 2. We’re just waiting for an excuse to break our own resolution. I go with number two. Regardless, we all end up breaking all our resolutions and becoming each other’s co-dependents. Now we’re worse off than if we hadn’t made a resolution in the first place; no improvement and several new co-dependent relationships. Bad. Bad.

I propose the following approach to resolutions: Make resolutions; just don’t make them at the New Year. Any time of year is fine, just not the New Year.

Resolutions are best achieved when they are: realistic, backed by research, shared with a very few, and followed up with daily thought and action. Now all this is not so hard as it might appear.

Realistic: means 20 pounds over two months, not 20 pounds before the dance next week.

Backed by research: means you learn all you can about where you can cut unnecessary calories from your diet, and know exactly how many hours a week of what kind of exercise will take to reach your goal.

Share with a very few: means to share with your significant other, and at most a small group of supportive friends; don’t share with anyone who might want you to fail out of jealousy.

Take daily thought and action toward your goal: this is both the most difficult part of the equation, and the most productive. Make a chart for food intake and exercise hours, and keep it current. This is not a torture. This is a motivation.

Now you are set for achieving your goal; just wait until everyone has broken his or her New Years resolutions, and then you’ll be free of pressure and can concentrate on actually achieving yours.

Then comes the sweet part. You can brag.

Philip Ashley's letter and photo of us in 1995

We received this letter, and the photograph, this week. We have been writing back and forth since 1995. He is now in a nursing home in Kentucky and obviously enjoys our letters as much as we enjoy his. He seems to be anticipating his passing, and is going through his possessions, passing them on to people who might enjoy them.

Seeing ourselves fifteen years ago, on our first big adventure ,
is certainly a blessing. Knowing one man from rural Kentucky has been thinking about his meeting with us so long ago, on his great adventure of driving to see the West, now in the twilight of his life, is priceless. We remember that moment, among a thousand moments on that trip, as special.

We are always a little surprised, and always delighted, to receive these letters. There have been two in the last few months. The first told a long story of his finding something valuable on the railroad right-of-way,returning it and getting a letter from the president of the railroad. He sent us the ORIGINAL letter from 40 years ago; this is why I know he is preparing for the end.

Someday there will be no more letters from: Phillip Ashley, R324, Nazareth, Kentucky  40048. We may take a year to notice; then we will look at this picture and cry for an old friend, so brief, yet so special.

If any of you remember how to hand write a letter, and lick a stamp, write him a note, send him a picture of yourself, and mention that you know, Mr. and Mrs. Bob and Claire Rogers.

Thank you for taking the time. You will bring one person great joy. You will receive 100 fold.

Planting Garlic in a Beijing Hutong

The hutongs of Beijing are being torn down. They are thousands of years old. The people are left to find their own way in a world they do not understand. Thousands grow rich at the expense of the millions. Does this mesh with your idea of a Communist state?

Our world is becoming complicated. Cold War ways of thinking about Asia in particular are useless, damaging to our foreign policy. I wish more Americans would use their wealth to see, really see, our World, and understand that it is not as we were taught in school. Go and experience for yourselves, the lives of people, who except for accident of birth, are not that much different from you. Remember that; not that much different from you.

“Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.”

To read all of Thomas Jefferson’s Inaugural Address: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres16.html